[1] Taking the urban environment of Tokyo as their canvas, the group sought to create interventions that blurred the lines between art and everyday life and raised questions about centralized authority and the role of the individual in society.
[2][1] Later considered to have been one of the most prominent and influential Japanese art groups of the 1960s, Hi-Red Center never officially disbanded, but their happening Cleaning Event in October 1964 proved to be their final artistic action.
[3] Nakanishi and Takamatsu worked together to stage Yamanote Line Incident (1962) (detailed below) in October 1962, subsequently participating in the "Signs of Discourse on Direct Action" symposium sponsored by Keishō art magazine held November that year, with Akasegawa as an interloctor.
All three artists had begun as painters but would embrace methods of “direct action” in their work with Hi-Red Center, borrowing a term from prewar socialist agitators.
[4] These discussions at the symposium led the artists to work together again to present their three-person show, "Fifth Mixer Plan," at the Dai-Ichi Gallery in Shinjunku and thus found the group Hi-Red Center in May 1963.
[9][page needed] Akasegawa in particular questioned the ways in which objects, actions, and environments gained coherence in relationship to each other and how artistic intervention acts could disrupt this.
[4][page needed] Shigeko Kubota and George Maciunas' edited map sheet Bundle of Events (1965) represents the corpus of the group's city interventions on a notational cartographic form, implying the confluence of their activities with the urban landscape.
[17] Art historian Reiko Tomii argues that the shift from the display of objects in an exhibition format to the installation and organisation of “Happenings” (hapuningu), “events” (ivento), and “rituals” (gishiki) in "extraexhibtion projects" required extensive collaboration inter and intra collectives.
[18] Thus, Hi-Red Center's form of Anti-Art practice can also be said to be postmodern, in its questioning of the notions of sole authorship, individualism and originality in modern art.
[10][20][page needed] Even the group's name was intended to form a was a fictional character called Mr. "Hi Red Center", similar to Marcel Duchamp’s Rrose Sélavy.
[19][page needed] Staged on 18 October 1962, Natsuyuki and Takamatsu boarded a Yamanote loop line train heading counter-clockwise on its route, disrupting the normalcy of passenger's commutes through a series of performative actions.
He carried Compact Objects or objets, transparent forms about the size and shape of an ostrich egg, with sundry or "junk" items such as wristwatches, bits of rope, sunglasses, bottle caps and human hair encased in resin.
Other participants, such as Murata Kiichi, applied white face paint and brought additional objects, including rope, real eggs and a chicken foot.
Their choice of setting can also be attributed to the larger desire for “direct action” (chokusetsu kodo), in the wake of waning public protests post-Anpo.
[14][page needed] Mark Pendleton argues that this work, and its form of intervention into the everyday, has influenced the ethos of subsequent collectives in the 1970s, such as Video Earth Tokyo.
The collective also situated their work in the Tokyo train system, installing a dining table and hosting a meal on a subway carriage in Shukutaku ressha/Video Picnic (1975).
[32][page needed] The group (and its members) had frequently worked and exhibited in Naiqua (内科; internal medicine) Gallery, and continued to do so individually after their disbanding.
[22] 56 guests, including artists such as Masao Adachi, Mieko Shiomi, Kazakura Shō, Tadanori Yokoo, Kawani Hiroshi, Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik, were invited into the Hi-Red Center suite to have their measurements taken, on the pretence of customising one-person nuclear bomb shelters.
[10] Jōnouchi Motoharu’s film Shelter Plan which documented the even shows that Nakanishi had papered the walls of the suite with images from the General Catalogue of Males ’63.
[38] Scholars such as Jessica Santone have read the work as "a critique of Cold War bureaucratic state machines by mimicking their excessive documentation and surveillant control of bodies, while drawing attention to the specificities of the individuals as they differ from normative ideals.
At the opening event, the group used hammers and nails to affix the door,[40] with no spectators except for a cockroach trapped in a glass, who was left in sealed gallery space.
The flyer posed an open call for participation, detailing arbitrary heuristic information under the organisation of the fictional “Metropolitan Environment Hygiene Execution Committee”.
[12][31] Cleaning Event prefigures later "intercollective networking",[14][page needed] being adopted by Kyukyoko Hyogen Kenkyujo (Final Art Institute) in 1973 and in the Expo '70 Destruction Joint-Struggle Group (Banpaku Hakai Kyõtõ-ha) protests in 1969-1970.
In the film, we see Yoko Ono signing a contract and lying on a bed, a still shot of Nakanishi's clothespin performance, the name card of the Hi Red Center group and the Imperial Hotel contract/rental form, Mystery Cans and a man taking a bath.
It obfuscates the human body and figure, showing segments of the torso, back, head and toes in various orientations, intercutting as if to trace the process of measurement integral to the piece.
[20][page needed] They go as far as to assert that "[the group used] documentation as an essential part of performance production, and with an even more radical stance of valuing the image more than the live action.
[2] As part of Akasegawa's trial, the members of the group restaged a few of their works (Takamatsu's String and presenting relics of the Shelter Plan event) in court in October 1966.
[55][page needed] Their demonstrations were intended to enlighten the court on the "happenings" nature of Akesagawa's work, yet inevitably substantiated their defense by arguing that the objects used in their performance events ought to be treated with museum-like care, contradicting the principles of their practice.